About 3 times the brown water went right up the windscreen to the roof and I had to quickly hit the wipers.  You might be able to zoom in on the sprinter and look up above the windscreen.

Indee station. 26/05/2015.

 

After a wet trip from Roebourne, we arrived at the home stead at 1.30 pm.  It was quit a “thrilling” entry as you will see from the attached pics.  Bev took as many as she was game to as we splashed, bumped & slid our way along the last 8.5 km of very wet road.  Had the sprinter travelling at a 45 deg angle to the roadway at one stage!

There is no rain today, but a fair bit of cloud.  There have been a few changes here since our last visit so it is time to get out and do some exploring.

One more email to follow.

Des & Bev. 

Roebourne, 38km north of Karatha.  24th May 2015.

Another big day of wide open spaces!

Left Coral Bay at 8.30 this morning not really knowing where we would end up tonight.

At first we thought that we might stop at Baradale RA where we had camped before, but we had only travelled 2.5 hours by then.

Robe River looked like the next big camp spot.  We arrived there just after 1.00 pm and had lunch.  There were at least 7 others there at the time and it had started to rain lightly so we decided that we could get to Karatha by 4.00 pm and do some shopping at Coles and get a fuel voucher.

Arrived at 4.05 pm and caught Coles still open, although just about everything else was closed in the Centro Karatha.  The BWS liquor shop was also closed.  Damn! Can’t take any brown amber cough elixir to Indee.  We only have less than 200 km, or 2 + hours to travel tomorrow to get there. This centre has doubled in size since we were here in 2009.

There is also some high-rise buildings in town now. We saw 2 new gas plants, 1 new iron ore mine, another mine of some description & something else large before we reached Karatha.  All new to us.  Something else new to us is that all of the larger rest areas, and some of the not so large ones, now have one and sometimes 2, Dump-ezy dump points to empty MH & CV toilets into.  This has to be a good thing.

On arrival at Roebourne CVP after travelling 572 km for the day, we were greeted by the operators who come from Bowerville.  Been here 3.5 years now. 

I am not sure when the next bulletin will be posted, it will depend on what Telstra signal is available, so all the best to everyone until then.

The Indee 500 motorcycle race is on just before the end of June.  25th & 26th I think.

Des & Bev. 

Post problems

Sorry about the Oakabell & Carnarvon text.  I have had a number of tries to edit it  get it the same as most of the others.
Has anyone any clues on this problem?

Coral Bay.  23/05/2015 Filled up the water tanks this morning as we knew that Coral Bay water is not very nice.  You can only take drinking water at the CVP, that must be rain water, not bore.We done some shopping at WW to get a discount fuel voucher before filling up at $1.419.  Saved $2.80 on 70 litres.  Had a look at the local markets and had a mango smoothie.There is still a lot of evidence of where the cyclone struck earlier in the year.  There are a lot of new banana “trees” starting to emerge.  Bananas were $4.5/kg at WW’s.
Again to-day there was a lot of vast nothing.  There is still a lot of empty land out there.  Travelled 240 km. to-day. $47 for a powered sit up the back tonight, better than $58 in the front row!The sand is very white here & the water in the shallows is clear and looks white from a distant and drops off to a deep blue further out. We will probably arrive at Indee on Monday or Tuesday. Regards,

Carnarvon

Carnarvon WA  Coral Coast Tourist Park

Friday 22nd May 2015

Big travelling day today, 442 km!

Left Murchison House Station at 8.30 am. Stopped at Galena Bridge to empty the toilet at the dump point.

There were no towns to pass through today so we kept moving along and arrived in Carnarvon at 3.00 pm and booked into the caravan park so that we could get the washing done.

Could have stayed 3 nights and only paid for 2, ($80) but decided to only stay 1 night at $40 and spend the rest on the washing and drying.

Were given 500mb of free wi-fi internet.  But can only receive mail, no outward, and it is sooooooo   slowwwwwww!

Will have to hook mine up to send the mail.

Tomorrow we will go to Coral Bay, and probably to Indee station on Sunday or Monday.

Getting late now (7.45 pm) so will close.

Regards,

Des & Bev.

Murchison House Station

Thursday 21/05/2015.

 

This is from a new spot that we found 10 km east of Kalbarri.

 

Today's travel of 192 km took us through Northampton, Horrocks, Lynton Station, this is where there are some convict ruins currently being restored..  This was where convicts with a ticket of leave were assigned to farms and various mining activities.

Port Gregory, with it’s pink lake was where we had lunch.  Then on to Kalbarri where we noticed that the town had grown a lot since our last visit.  Then to this camp.

This email will not go out tonight as we do not have any mobile signal.

 

Des & Bev. 

Oakabella Homestead

Firstly, a correction to last night,s report.  We were at camp site 322, not 422.

Big day today, we traveled 156 km! Had a look around Dongara & Port Denison this morning.

These 2 places have changed quite a bit since we were here 6 years ago.

We checked out The Leaning Tree at Greenough, about 25 km south of Geraldton.

We met up with a lady from Geraldton who we were staying next to on Norfolk Island last year, and had lunch together at The Winterson Hotel/Motel.  $10 specials!

Bev, the lady, then invited us to her beautiful home looking out over the Indian ocean, to fill up our water tank with tank water.  There was much reminiscing and stories told over a cup of coffee. After refueling we drove about 35 km north to where we are tonight.  This is supposed to be Western Australia’s most haunted house.  Sooo, if you don,t get any more emails ................ ??

We will see what tomorrow brings.

Des & Bev.

Dongara East

Tuesday 19/05/2015

CAW7 WA422 about 10km from Dongara.

Yesterday we travelled 207 km, today 366.  Left Bindoon about 9.00 am and some of the towns which we passed through were Gingin, Seabird, Lancalin and lunch at Cervantes.  These towns are along the Indian Ocean Drive, a good road mostly along the coast.  Jurian Bay, Green Head, Leeman, and to re join the Brand Hwy to our camp site.

Only short tonight as we are not on power and computer battery is getting low.

Des.

18/05/2015

Monday 18/05/2015

The sun was shining this morning so we decide that we had better stir the horses up and move along a bit.  We left Norm & Beryl’s at 10.00 am.

Had a short break at Narrogin before stopping for lunch at Brookton.  The next  town where we had a walk around was Beverley.  That was a compulsory stop!

When we arrived at York, we found that “The Mill” where a friend of ours produces furniture etc. was closed.

Further on we passed through Northam, on our way to Toodyay, (yes, that spelling is correct), from where we proceed to Bindoon, where we are camped tonight at the oval.

It started to rain a little just before we arrived here, but soon stopped.

The fuel light came on just out of town.  We had travelled 694 km from Munglinup on that tank so thought that we had better get some here.  Only 1 servo here and diesel $1.48 / ltr. so only bought 25 ltr.  Had seen it as low as $1.33 at York.  We had hoped to get to Gingin before filling up but we came through some hilly country in the last 30 odd kilometers.

Tank is half full now so will have to re=calculate our next fuel stop.

Time is now 6.40 pm so had better get to bed.

Des & Bev.

17/05/2015

As mentioned yesterday,the weather was not looking good.  That was an understatement!  We received some extremely strong winds and some rain during the afternoon and into the evening.  It did abate during the night and the sun has tried to shine through a couple of times this morning, but not with much success.  Temp. still about 12 deg.

A couple of details to add about the TV stick.The installation files are on a CD, 611mb, I had to copy them onto a USB stick to be able to install it onto the tablet as it does not have a CD drive. System requirements are Intel or AMD CPU, AMD (Radeon) or Nividia (Geforce) Graphics card, 1 GB memory, 1 x USB 2.o port, Windows XP, Windows Vista, Windows 7 or 8.  It is working on my Windows 7 laptop & the Windows 8.1 tablet.

The stick can also be connected to an ordinary antenna cable from your caravan or motorhome antenna outlet.

There was another similar thing for Android at the same price but it was much smaller and did not appear to have much of an antenna, although it could accept a mobile telephone type of patch lead.  The salesperson did not know just how well they performed.

Looks like the day is going to be spent by the wood heater watching my hard work go up in flames as the wind, not strong, and clouds are still around.

Regards from Des & Bev.

16/05/2015

Good morning to you all!

 

Not long before we leave Wagin now.  We have moved the departure date a few times.

On Tuesday Norm and I went about 20km out of town and split a lot of fire wood using a block splitter and brought it home to put in his new wood shed.

On Wednesday we all went to Bunbury for the day and bought a few things.  I bought a most amazing little thing for the computer.  It is a Kaiser Baas TV stick.

Looks like a USB memory stick.  Has a magnetic antenna about 100mm long and receives all the free to air TV channels perfectly clear on the laptop & the tablet.

Well here at least.  Can’t wait to see how it goes when we are further out of town.

It is 1080i HDTV, USB2, DV3T, DAB+ with software & remote control.  I bought it at JB-HIFI for $44.10, that was after a 10% discount. Usually $49.00.

 

Thursday it was back to the wood splitting for Norn & I and we finally got the wood shed almost filled up.  It would not hold much more anyway.

 

The weather is not looking the best for us at present, so the departure day has been moved to Monday.

 

Cheerio for now,

Des & Bev. 

Just in case someone is beginning to think that we are lost I had better send an email.

 

After leaving Esperance on Wednesday the rain cleared up about where the turnoff to Hopetoune (?) is.

It was still raining fairly heave a bit back down the track at Munglinup where we refueled at $1.55 / ltr.  54 litres, we had travelled 504 km and still had over 1/2 tank left.

Because we did not know if Ravensthorpe had come to life again after the nickel mine had closed a few years back (open again now) we fuelled at Munglinup.

As it happened, Ravensthorpe is now thriving again and the fuel was only $1.37 / ltr.

That night we camped at Overshot Hill Nature Reserved where there were 2 other caravans and a backpacker van.  Thursday was a cold 5 deg. morning.

Lake King was the next photo stop before travelling a straight 60 km. to Newdegate where the road had a couple of turns through town.  It was coffee time there.

Another 50 km straight stretch of road took us to Lake Grace.  Found and used the dump point there and logged it’s position for Camps Australia wide.  We have found a few new ones this trip.

Next stop was Dumbleyung, for a snack and coffee.  Lake Dumbleyung is where Sir Donald Campbell set his water speed record in 1964.  He also set the land speed record on Lake Eyre the same year.

 

We arrived at Bev’s cousins place at Wagin around 2.30 pm.   Have been fairly busy since then doing things.  Will be leaving here sometime later this week.  The temperature was 7 degrees yesterday morning, 10 this morning.

 

Happy mother’s day to all the mothers out there!

Had a nice night at Salmon Gums last night, only in bed from 9.00 pm until 6.30 am.

Not like the previous nights 6.00 pm to 6.00 am!

 

Have had our first rain today since leaving Skipton in Victoria.

Has been raining a bit for the last 50 km from Scadan.

 

Only a short one this time.

Tues. 5th May 2015

Been a while since we left Murray Bridge, also been a while for me to catch up with time & power & phone signal to send email.

We were supposed to be able to get signal here tonight at Salmon Gums, between Norsman & Esperance WA, but we can’t.

After Murray Bridge we did camp at the old Terowie railway station.  This is where General Douglas Macarthur made a special speech in 1942.

Prior to arriving there we had visited the old copper mining towns of Kapunda & Burra. Kapunda was established in 1839 & is classified as Australia’s oldest mining town.

I do hope to get time to give a little more detail in the blog when I can get around to it.

From Terowie it was on to Peterborough, where there was a older models car display happening at the railway station. Morning tea was at Orroroo before going to Port Augusta for lunch and fuel. By the time we made camp at Kimba, Saturday was almost gone.  Kimba claims to be halfway across Australia.  The Kimba recreation reserve is a very nice place to camp. We had Sunday lunch at Ceduna before fuelling up and going on to the Nundaroo East roadside rest area, which we shared with a couple from Tasmania.

We were a little disappointed to find that the best viewing areas for the Bunda Cliffs of the Great Australian Bight have been close due to safety reasons.  There are now only 4 areas accessible toward the western end of the bight  before reaching the WA border.  After the border inspection, we turned into Eucla for lunch.  We had been pushing very strong head & side winds for a few hours, and this continued for the rest of the afternoon.  The fuel that we bought at Ceduna, the first quarter of a tank took us 290 Km, then we hit the wind & the next HALF of the tank only took us 272 Km. luckily we had a quarter left to get to Mundrabilla.  Still had wind blowing until we reached Moonera Tank 12 to camp for the night, sharing the large area with an older couple from Bunbury.

The wind had eased this morning and we had a better run to Norsman for a late lunch before coming here for the night.

So far we have travelled 4134 Km and spent $673.76 on diesel.  (504.43 ltr.)

That brings us up to date.  Sorry for the long story tonight.